A decision by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to make an exemption and issue a visa to Mariela Castro, the daughter of Cuban ruler Raul Castro, has drawn irate criticisms from Cuban-American lawmakers and activists.

Mariela Castro ---->[Photo: libertad.org]

The visa approval came amid reports by two knowledgeable U.S. officials that Cuban authorities over the past year have increasingly harassed U.S. diplomats in Havana and tightly limited their travels around the communist-ruled island.

Mariela Castro, a sexologist who heads the Cuban National Center for Sex Education in Havana, is expected to participate in the four-day conference of the Latin American Studies Association, which begins Wednesday in San Francisco. Made up largely of U.S. academics, LASA generally invites 20-30 Cubans to its conferences, and a few are usually denied visas.

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., criticizing the visa for Castro, said she is “a vociferous advocate of the regime and opponent of democracy, who has defended the regime’s brutal repression of democracy activists.”

The U.S. government and LASA should not be “in the business of providing a totalitarian regime, like the one in Cuba, with a platform from which to espouse its twisted rhetoric,” Menendez noted.